Vikas Mehta and his wife had just managed the chaotic process of moving from Berlin to San Francisco with three children, including a newborn.
Mehta was an eBay executive who specialized in building new ventures within the e-commerce company. The idea was to settle down in a single place after an era of globetrotting for the family, and Silicon Valley had long been their home base between expat adventures.
A short time later they moved to Buffalo.
Mehta is now the chief operating officer at ACV Auctions, Buffalo’s first software unicorn, which went public earlier this year on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
He’s an example of how successful tech ventures can lure big-time talent away from the coasts and introduce them to Western New York. Mehta started at ACV in early 2019 and his family joined him soon thereafter. They bought a home in Williamsville.
“The community has been warm and welcoming,” Mehta said. “There’s a unique, almost Midwest culture, which personally resonates with us as a family.”
But make no mistake, this was about opportunity. As he was settling back into San Francisco, Mehta received a call from Somak Chattopadhyay, a former classmate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chattopadhyay went on to a career in venture capital in Manhattan before moving to Skaneateles, near Syracuse.
The Mehta family lived in Toronto before Berlin and would occasionally visit Skaneateles.
“We got a taste and a feel for Western New York,” Mehta said. “It rubbed off on us.”
Still, despite calls from Chattopadhyay and ACV Auctions CEO George Chamoun, Mehta initially declined the offer. They were, after all, in the midst of executing on a plan that would settle the family in the Bay Area for the long term.
But after more advocacy, Mehta visited Buffalo in October 2018. He spoke to the executive team and ACV’s board of directors. He got a sense that the company’s dealer-to-dealer automotive marketplace had massive potential.
Why?
“My observation was that there was a very clear product-market fit,” Mehta said. “There was a need for something like ACV to really help our customers and a great foundation in terms of sales and products. The flywheel value proposition was churning fast.”
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Chattopadhyay, whose firm was an early investor in ACV Auctions, hit the recruitment trail after Chamoun mentioned that he was seeking a COO. He said his longtime friend's experience in building online marketplaces gave him the appropriate domain experience for the role.
But he said Mehta's skill in connecting with and managing stakeholders sealed the deal. Now they just had to sell him on ACV and Buffalo.
In Chamoun's first Zoom call with Mehta, he gave a virtual tour of ACV's offices in the Innovation Center.
"The energy of the ACV office came alive on Vikas' computer screen thousands of miles away," Chattopadyay said. "Vikas hopped on a plane shortly thereafter to visit Buffalo."
Chattopadhyay called one of his new connections, Scott Stenclik, the CEO of Aleron. Stenclik's wife, Rachel, is on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery board. They arranged a private tour of the museum for Mehta.
"After the tour, Rachel gave him a large art book with paintings from the museum's superlative collection," Chattopadhyay said. "When he showed the Albright Knox art book to his children and family and noted how welcoming Buffalonians were when he visited Buffalo, his family was very intrigued. Vikas' wife and children are sports fanatics and love the visual arts too so this made Buffalo an exciting place to consider as a home."
Mehta joined the company just after it raised $93 million in venture capital and crossed the 500-employee threshold. This March, the company raised $414 million in its initial public offering, with shares hovering around $20 apiece. ACV (NASDAQ: ACVA) now has about 1,700 employees.
As of the IPO, Mehta had 640,187 shares, worth about $13 million at the current share prices. For this coming year, the ACV board approved a base salary of $325,000 for Mehta with a target-based bonus of $150,000. He is 45.
Mehta says ACV Auctions is in the midst of executing on a long-term opportunity, with a focus on building best-in-class products for its customers. The company recently recruited former LendingClub executive Bahman Koohestani as chief technology officer. Like Mehta, Koohestani is relocating with his family from San Francisco to Buffalo.
ACV posted $83.9 million in revenue in its most recent quarter, but it still has captured less than 10% of the overall U.S. marketshare as automotive sales migrate away from in-person to online auctions, Mehta said.
“We still have a huge greenfield ahead and a lot of learning to be done,” he said.
In the meantime, the company takes seriously its role as both a tangible and symbolic leader of Buffalo’s technology economy.
“It’s been personally rewarding to see the growth and the scaling of this company,” Mehta said. “ACV is going to help create a vibrant tech and innovation economy in Buffalo, beyond where it is today.”
